WPR12LA176 · Skykits USA Corp SAVANNAH ADV
Skykits USA Corp SAVANNAH ADV · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Upolu Airport (UPP) to Hilo International Airport (ITO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA176
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Skykits USA Corp SAVANNAH ADV
- Aircraft type
- Skykits SAVANNAH ADV
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N5089F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Upolu Airport (UPP), Hawi, HITo Hilo International Airport (ITO), Hilo, HI
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2006)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner/pilot topped off both fuel tanks in the special light-sport airplane, flew uneventfully to another airport, and departed shortly thereafter. About 75 minutes after the initial departure, while in cruise flight at an altitude that the pilot estimated as between 2,500 and 3,000 feet, the engine lost power. Due in part to the airplane's low altitude, the pilot did not attempt any corrective actions, and focused on finding a suitable landing location. The pilot selected a young cornfield for the landing but stalled the airplane a few feet above the ground, which resulted in a near vertical impact trajectory in a flat attitude. The pilot reported that he believed that the power loss was due to asymmetric fuel feed from the two wing-mounted fuel tanks due to a plugged fuel vent in the left tank. Although the fuel vents were not examined, no mechanical failures or deficiencies that would have precluded continued engine operation were observed during examination of the airplane. Accordingly, the investigation did not determine a specific reason for the power loss, or the specific reason(s) why the pilot stalled the airplane.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power during cruise for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s failure to avoid an aerodynamic stall at low altitude during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA176
- Event ID
- 20120419X75715
- Case number
- WPR12LA176
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f19c78ecd456fb1f70975963adaac3e1d8fa1f8663f48e3df74e24cab9547e32; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:50:04.714Z.